Sascha Wil­son

Peo­ple who suf­fer prop­er­ty loss or dam­age due to the neg­li­gence of State agen­cies will be com­pen­sat­ed.The as­sur­ance came from Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal as he and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Gan­ga Singh, hand­ed over a cheque to a Bar­rack­pore fam­i­ly whose home was de­stroyed by a mas­sive land­slip caused by a leak­ing un­der­ground pipeline be­long­ing to the util­i­ty.In a brief ad­dress at WASA's South Re­gion­al Of­fice, St James Street, San Fer­nan­do, Mooni­lal said: "Many res­i­dents are suf­fer­ing be­cause of the neg­li­gence of State agen­cies and not just WASA."He promised that un­der the new dis­pen­sa­tion of State bod­ies those prob­lems would be dealt with.In­ter­viewed af­ter­wards Mooni­lal promised com­pen­sa­tion to peo­ple who en­dured prop­er­ty loss or dam­age due to the neg­li­gence of any State agency.Say­ing there were oth­er com­plaints in­volv­ing WASA, T&TEC and HDC, he said: "We are hop­ing that the State agen­cies meet and treat (with these is­sues) as WASA did in a hu­mane man­ner." The cheque was re­ceived by Rhea Ju­goon-Ba­booram and her fa­ther Rooplal Ju­goon whose home at School Hill, Bar­rack­pore, was de­stroyed by land ero­sion due to a leak­ing pipeline.Dur­ing a tour of the area in Jan­u­ary Mooni­lal and Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er were ver­bal­ly abused by Ba­booram's sis­ter.

Re­call­ing the "heat" he and Warn­er faced from res­i­dents dur­ing their vis­it, the Oropouche East MP de­scribed that as pent up frus­tra­tion.He said the res­i­dents had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing that prob­lem for the past ten years. Mooni­lal said he was pleased WASA and the Ju­goon fam­i­ly reached an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment since the mat­ter was in the hands of lawyers.De­scrib­ing WASA's ini­tial of­fer of $117,000 to the fam­i­ly as "in­ad­e­quate and com­plete­ly un­fair," he said the agreed fig­ure was sig­nif­i­cant­ly more. He said the Works Min­istry had em­barked on a $10 mil­lion project to fix the land ero­sion prob­lem and it was 95 per cent com­plet­ed.Mean­while, Ju­goon-Ba­booram said while her fa­ther was not very pleased with the amount, she was thank­ful to Mooni­lal, Singh and coun­cil­lor Bryan Ju­lian.